Access and Media Services

LITS Annual Report 2002-2003

This report reflects the services and staffing of the Access Services Unit for the academic year 2002 - 2003.

Circulation

Despite the national trend in libraries of decreased circulation, we circulated 99,707 items, which was a 13% increase over last year. More importantly was the 17% increase in circulation of our own collection to members of the Mount Holyoke Community. We continue to provide a collection that meets the needs of our users.

• Five College connection - Through a combination of direct borrowing and the Five College Delivery system we circulated 19,504 items to our consortia partners.

• Simmons GSLIS – Throughout the year we supported 22 graduate course in the Simmons MLS program. We processed course reserves, scheduled classrooms and kept accurate student and faculty data.

ILL

We had a significant increase in both our borrowing and lending though ILL this year. Once again we made the NELINET Top 20 OCLC Lenders list and continue to be a net lender. During the year we joined the AAU/ARL/NCC Japan Journal Access Project which allows us to increase our ability to borrow materials held by nearly 60 Japanese libraries. We also began using OCLC’s ILL Fee Management (IFM) service which has reduced our ILL administrative costs by tracking and reconciling charges through our regular OCLC invoice.

Media Resources

Media Services and Electronic Services merged in January 2003. This merger combined the traditional audiovisual department, known as media services, together with the group that was building and supporting classroom technology, training users and doing event support. Electronic Services was also the department that handled many other tasks for the academic program: such as supporting technology for the sciences. Over the years Electronic Services worked with many campus departments to implement new initiatives ranging from offering the first micro-computer user groups in the pre-IBM desktop days on campus, operating the first Unix machine used as a networked mail machine between Carr lab and Physics, and installing the first mediated classroom in Western Massachusetts that was operated by a easy to use control system. We continue to keep abreast of new classroom technologies and strive to provide innovative services to our community in this ever changing environment.

• Mediated Classroom support - During the past year we installed 10 new mediated classrooms in Kendade, Art, Carr and Library 618. We also upgraded 7 mediated classrooms in Clapp, Skinner, Gamble, Hooker and Ciruti.

• Circulating Media - The complex set of rules that evolved over the years has made it very difficult for our users, as well as our staff, to borrow and track media and media equipment in a consistent process. Over the past year we evaluated our policies and procedures focusing on providing the services our users need and clearly communicating our policies.

• Event support and film screenings - Over the last year two years we have seen the numbers drop for requests of technical support during on-campus events in the evening. Previous audio visual systems were complex and have now been replaced with user friendly equipment.

Screening Support

New Services

• Leisure Collection – The addition of a leisure book/audio tape collection, shelved in the courtyard, was well received by our community. A loan period of two weeks was set to allow for a steady turnover of materials. Due to the popularity of the collection, we will be adding books on CD-ROM.

• Laptops – In mid-October we began circulating wireless laptops for use within the LITS complex. Students used the computers to work on research projects, word documents and to access electronic databases as they worked in their carrels and study areas in the library. We purchased 10 Dell laptops and soon realized we couldn’t keep up with the demand. For fall 2003 we will have 20 laptops available to use within the building complex.

We continue to provide both print and electronic reserves for our patrons. During the year we scanned 2839 pages for electronic reserves in the support of 40 different courses. The Electronic Reserves web page was redesigned during the summer of 2002 using the new LITS template.

Staffing
Gail Scanlon took on additional responsibilities within the Administrative Unit as the Director of Access and Technology Services. In March, Karen Mehl was promoted to Circulation Manager. Sue French resigned her position in Circulation in February which allowed Lisa Sotak to step into a full time position as the Evening Supervisor. Nathan Kelleher began working for us as a part time shelver through the Connections, Work-to-Career Program at South Hadley High School.

Committees/ Conferences/ Workshops
During the year members of Access Services staff were involved in the following activities:

• Five College Circulation Committee

• Five College Library Billing meeting

• ACRL annual conference, Charlottee

• InfoCom, Orlando

• NERCOMP, Needham

• Local Experts Group

• Student Employment meetings

• Ingenta Demo

• Open Linking Demo

• Federated Searching Demo

• Management Team meetings

• Community Campaign meetings

• Liaison to South Hadley 250^th Committee

• Mellon Recruting Grant meetings, Oberlin

• Disaster Plan committee

• LITS Advisory committee

• Faculty meeting

• Five College Leadership conference

• Various search committees

• OPC meetings

• Blanchard/Clapp/Cleveland/Shattuck Renovations meetings

• Campus visits to Wellesley College and Williams CollegeThis report reflects the services and staffing of the Access Services Unit for the academic year 2002 - 2003.